In recent years, researchers in artificial intelligence have become interested in replicating human physical reasoning talents in computers. One of the most important skills in this area is predicting how physical systems will behave. This thesis discusses an implemented program…

The goal of the work reported here is to capture the commonsense knowledge of non-expert human contributors. Achieving this goal will enable more intelligent human-computer interfaces and pave the way for computers to reason about our world. In the domain…

Sketches are commonly used in the early stages of design. Our previous system allows users to sketch mechanical systems that the computer interprets. However, some parts of the mechanical system might be too hard or too complicated to express in…

Karim Hussein ... [et al.], "March 1994.", Includes bibliographical references (p. [23]-[24])., Supported by the Productivity From Information Technology (PROFIT) Research Initiative at MIT.

M.P. Reddy ... [et al.], Reprint. Reprinted from IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering. Vol. 6, no. 6 (Dec. 1994) "December 1994.", Includes bibliographical references (p. 932)., Supported by the Productivity From Information Technology (PROFIT) Research Initiative at MIT.

A system for visual recognition is described, with implications for the general problem of representation of knowledge to assist control. The immediate objective is a computer system that will recognize objects in a visual scene, specifically hammers. The computer receives…

This report develops a conceptual framework in which to talk about mathematical knowledge. There are several broad categories of mathematical knowledge: results which contain the traditional logical aspects of mathematics; examples which contain illustrative material; and concepts which include formal…

This report shows how knowledge about the visual world can be built into a shape representation in the form of a descriptive vocabulary making explicit the important geometrical relationships comprising objects' shapes. Two computational tools are offered: (1) Shapestokens are…

This report investigates some techinques appropriate to representing the knowledge necessary for understanding a class of electronic machines -- radio receivers. A computational performance model - WATSON - is presented. WATSONs task is to isolate failures in radio receivers whose…

This thesis investigates what knowledge is necessary to solve mechanics problems. A program NEWTON is described which understands and solves problems in mechanics mini-world of objects moving on surfaces. Facts and equations such as those given in mechanics text need…